Journal from Oaxaca

Greetings from Guatemala

2007-04-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm not actually in Guatemala at the moment, I just liked the
sound of the alliteration in my head so I went with it. I did go this
weekend, though, and had a grand adventure with-- who'd have guessed
it-- Tim. He is really enjoying living in San Cristobal, and as I'm
currently in the middle of two weeks' paid vacation for Semana Santa
and Easter, I've had the chance to check out the famous (infamous?)
city of San Cristobal de las Casas myself for a few days while he was
at work in addition to a little weekend trip over the border.

To put all this in context, I should mention that I have dreamed of
coming to San Cris since high school, as it has been pinpointed as the
heart of the organized Zapatista movement and is a hotbed for issues
like land ownership and indigenous rights. Tim has found his way into
a cool organization called CAPICE, for which he is doing miscellaneous
media work, and absolutely loves the place. So anyways, I hopped on a
bus and came down, to get a break from the constant work and white
noise of Orizaba. i brought Crackers the ferret with me in his little
traveling backpack, and the vacation got off on a bad foot when he was
stolen somewhere around Tuxtla (a horrible city, full of horrible
people)... simply disappeared off the bus. We searched when we got to
San Cris, but he was nowhere to be found... didn't respond to his
squeaky chicken leg toy, which he usually comes running to... nothing.
Just gone. I must say, was (am) really upset over the situation- he
was easily the best pet I ever had, we woke up at 5am together and
played before my roommate and her princess poodle woke up and took
over the house, and then again before I went to bed every day... I
only hope that whoever stole him resold him to a nice family
somewhere. That is the best thing I can do under present
circumstances. I have been trying not to think about it.

On the positive side... I must say, San Cristobal is incredible. A
tourist mecca, cultural center, and just a little bit of everything
else. Hundreds come here for the laid-back environment, from hippie
tourists to academics studying land reform and anthropology to
Mexicans just looking to get a change of scenery. All kinds of
artesania, just about every kind of food you could possibly imagine,
beautiful churches, and above all-- fabulous weather. I spent this
morning, in fact, suntanning on the patio of Tim's nice little
apartment, which includes all the best aspects of camping (namely, a
fire pit on his patio and a fireplace in his bedroom) and all the best
aspects of the real world (namely, a clean place to sleep and a hot
shower!)... we bought a grill to put over the firepit and have been
BBQing Mexico-style regularly.

I spent the better part of last week exploring local places, including
all the local cafes and markets, but also the market and church of
nearby Cholula and a private home in Zinacantan with home-brewed pox
(pronounced "poshe", essentially Mayan moonshine made of god only
knows what) where we tried plain, tamarind-flavor, orange-flavor, and
jamaica-flavored pox and I spent a whopping $60 (yikes! the single
most expensive purchase I have made in Mexico) on one of the most
beautiful hand-embroidered tapestries you have ever seen.

Tim's work, CAPICE, located in a cafe called TierrAdentro (earth
inside) is an amazing place: it features a number of stores, mostly
Mayan women cooperatives, which make amazing crafts and jewelry, all
centered around a good cafe with coffee so strong I think it tastes
like chalk half the time ("California strength" Tim and I call it
after our adventures in Utah with Don's class and the cranky parents
who needed their daily fix of caffeine to come both early and strong),
but it's a good kind of chalk, and it's free for Tim and sometimes me
if I smile broadly enough. They recently had a conference where a
number of Zap subcomandantes (including Marcos!) came and spoke about
social reform and the next phase of the Zapatista movement... and if I
can brag just a little bit here, MY boyfriend was the techie behind it
all! He is getting the awesome opportunity to meet with different
kinds of professors and researchers and social activists. We were
recently invited to dinner, for example, with a couple of professors
from UMass and some local professors to sip margaritas and talk
politics. It's certainly a good foothold for his own research
interests, and a great field experience that I'm happy to be able to
share at least while I'm on vacation.

Then, as if things couldn't get any better, we hopped aboard a bus
full of Canadian students (ey) and took a quick (well, 3 hour) trip to
the border directly down 195, got our passports and visas stamped,
changed buses, and took another quick (well, 5 hour) trip to Lago
Santiago, one of the most gorgeous lakes I've ever seen, really. Of
course it was raining when we got there, but even from our misty
vantage point descending down into the valley (the lake is surrounded
by three volcanoes), we could see that the view was absolutely
fabulous, something like on a postcard.

From the horrible tourist town we arrived in, we took a boat ride of
maybe half an hour across the lake to the smaller, more comfortable
Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, where we would stay for Thursday and
Friday nights to witness a Mayan-Christian costumbre (in this case,
translated not to mean "custom" but as a religious event stemming from
two distinct traditions which have blended together): namely, the
rebirth of Christ (in Mayan religions, the god of Maize) after the
ruling of Relaj-Mam, god of the underworld.

The short version of the (ridiculously complicated, totally unclear
even after a weekend of study and witnessing of reenactment) story is
that each year, Christ dies and for a time the god of the underworld,
Relaj-Mam (who is considered a necessary evil, and to whom one prays
so that bad things do NOT happen to one's friends and family) rules
the world. Each year, special fruits are brought from the coast and
wrapped in foil and draped over the central altar in the normal
church, representing the portal to the underworld and the web of the
universe above it which Relaj-Mam controls. A papier mache figure of
Christ is then prepared for a special night-long procession, where San
Juan pendejo (literally, Saint John the prick) carries his, um, semen
to the virgin Mary, who is a few streets away. I am not kidding about
this part. The men carrying the Saint John figure on their backs
literally run back and forth all night without stopping between Jesus
and Mary and do this funny little dance every time they reach a
terminal to represent the impregnation of Mary. While this is
happening, the Christ and Mary figures are moved slowly towards one
another until at dawn they are united in front of the church and
Christ is, well, immaculately reconceived from his own semen
somehow... or something. I know, it doesn't make much sense,
especially given the fact that according to legend, St. John is both
Mary's husband and Christ's brother before he dies. I don't reccommend
you try to figure that one out, it is nothing but a headache. We
stayed up until 2 watching, but nothing much happened except that most
of the women and children went to bed and the die hard males in the
community stayed awake either participating in the ceremony or getting
wasted off of pox and, as rumor had it, crack. So we went to bed for
the better part of the night, trusting that the beautiful ceremonious
part of the tradition had already been seen and that we didn't need to
see what ills lie awake at night.

The next day and night's ceremonies are a little bit easier to
understand, but they also last the entire 24 hour period (some elders
and religious personages stay awake for 72ish hours during the
ceremonies). Christ is put into an urna (sort of like a beautiful,
transparent form of a coffin) beginning at the beginning of the day,
and artists from the town over spend the day making a sort of carpet
of patterns made by multicolored sawdust (I am not doing it justice;
even as I write I realize that sounds kind of strange- better to look
at the pictures), and then at night Christ is placed in the
(ridiculously heavy) urna and a procession of perhaps 20 men spends
the entire night until dawn walking at a snail's pace (slower, even)
around maybe four blocks on the sawdust paintings, destroying them
with their feet and again arriving back at the doorstep of the church
at around 6am (dawn). The two days culminates in the raising of Christ
on his crucifix and a Catholic mass... unless I have that mixed up...
which I very well may... I have it all written down somewhere, but
every time I spoke to someone I found more questions than I found
answers. Anyways. That's the Short Version.

The whole thing was incredible, and a ton of fun. It was a weekend of
candles, ceremonies, four-hour naps, photographs, changed camera
lenses, and trips to the church and the few blocks surrounding it. We
even sat through almost all of a ridiculously long mass in Spanish and
the local dialect after the raising of the cross in the navel of the
world (supposedly, its centermost part) until our legs would not hold
out any longer and our feet fell asleep and we had to go eat. It was a
bit esoteric anyways: I understood most of the Spanish half, but that
was all, and Tim even less.

Unfortunately, I and a few other members of our expedition got
wickedly sick on our last day (monteczuma's revenge guatemala style),
and had no chance to check out the tourist mecca across the lake,
through which we again exited on our way back into Mexico. Tim walked
around a bit, but didn't find much of interest except for a delicious
street vendor which gave him babyback ribs. Instead, he finds himself
ill today. Fortunately, it seems to be a quickly-passing illness, and
when I spoke to him last before dragging his computer to TierrAdentro
to write, he looked much better and was about to take a nap.

So... that's pretty much it for the Mexico side of things. I plan on
staying out this week in San Cris and taking it easy. I found a
meditation center that I would like to check out, and there are as
always new hidden corners to explore in a new city, and of course more
free coffee at TierrAdentro, should I decide to start eating something
besides rice, beans and Gatorade in the next few days.

In other news, I am awaiting the official offer letter from the
Academy of Urban School Leadership (www.ausl-chicago.org), but I
passed all of my tests (including physics, which I was sure I failed)
and it looks like in late June I will be moving to Chicago to become a
certified, master's degree-ified teacher in the Chicago Public Schools
system, and will therefore be much easier to keep track of, as it
requires a six year commitment. However, as Don always says, "the top
three reasons for becoming a teacher are June, July and August" and I
have promised myself to have a lot of international adventures in the
summers when I am not putting my nose to the grindstone teaching and
being taught to be an even bigger nerd than I already am.

Mostly I just wanted to check in and say hi, that yes I do still exist
and am still writing as much as ever, but that most of it hasn't made
it to a computer yet. I have mostly been journaling, and reading
Tolstoy, (Anna Karenina was recommended to me by a teacher friend I
have been spending most of my time with in Orizaba). I also uploaded
some new pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/anjolley/ ... I
haven't quite gotten to all of the Guatemala ones yet, but there are a
few there... many were taken at night (I have several hundred to go
through) and I need to spend some more time sorting them before I put
them online, but I promise to do so soon...

Cheers,

Anna

Christmas in Oaxaca

2006-12-26T11:39:00.000-08:00

Hello, hello... as usual, my thoughts on a little bit of everything, sort of in the form of an email and sort of in the form of an internal monologue.

The tree was exactly what I wanted it to be. Not exactly a Charlie Brown tree, but nonetheless a little guy, barely taller than I was, and just a little lopsided in its branches. It was drizzling when I bought it, the kind of rain that they slangily call "chippy chippy" in Mexico, just enough to be ignored on a good day, just enough to be totally irritating on a bad day or when driving. The total cost was $130 in pesos, or just under thirteen American dollars. This fact in and of itself was a thing of immense pride for me, as the plastic ones in Chedraui and Gigante were at least twice as much, and obviously they didn't come with the authentic Christmas-tree smell. Cheeka and I had been looking for several days, but I knew the moment I saw the lot and was quoted a price that this would be where I bought the tree for my classroom. Never mind the house. Kate had already decorated it to the brim with kitchy decorations found in our downstairs storage closet (which is, incidentally, never ending- I even found a cappuccino maker in there the other day). No, I wanted something that people would see and enjoy every day, something that would liven up my classroom. So I bought a tree.
I coerced a taxi driver to load the bound tree into the back of his car, and he brought me, Cheeka and it home to our apartment. The tree was none the worse for the wear, though I couldn't say the same for the taxi's trunk, which suffered from inexplicable brown dirt stains on removal of the tree. I paid the driver and escaped into the house, dragging the tree behind me and onto our patio before he could scowl himself into charging an even higher faire. I would deal with getting the tree to the school later. I went to bed early, reasoning that I could think better in the early morning anyway. And sure enough the next day at five thirty am, right on schedule, I was hit with a stroke of particular genius and decided that the best way to get the tree to school was to tie it to my wheeling luggage, which I energetically rolled out from under my bed for the occasion, using the removable strap to tie the thing down so it didn't flop off the wheels. And so it was thus that I went to school a few weeks ago on a Tuesday morning, all prim and proper in my button down shirt and uniform, wheeling a Christmas tree behind me as though it were simply another bag of books. All in all, I didn't draw too many more stares than usual. My neighbors are now somewhat used to me toting bags of things for science experiments and showing up at the local miscellanea stores at six in the morning asking if they have, per chance, toothpicks or raisins or six small blocks of ice of identical size. A Christmas tree, I suppose, simply seemed the next logical step on my slow public parade into seeming insanity.
And so we decorated the tree. My students were absolutely thrilled, and brought in everything from lights to ornaments to window decorations to a can of spray-on window snow that didn't work. I had to let go a little bit of my compulsion to do things perfectly when it came to putting on the lights, something which in my family is usually done with meticulous care and attention, and let my students simply have at it. At the end, it looked beautiful, and it was with more than just a little pride that each day I walked into my classroom early to turn on the lights, and with more than just a little regret that I switched them off again at the end of the day. I have the habit of arriving a full hour early to work, when the middle school students are just beginning the day, just to sit in the sanctuary of my classroom, grade papers, and go over the things I want to do in the course of the day.
Exams were hectic. I lost my voice on day two, and sucked down an entire jar of Honey Loquat, my new preferred throat medicine, in the course of the week so that I could simply stay alive. The work of the teacher I had replaced was characterized with horrible bouts of laziness and forgetfulness at things such as recording grades in any way shape or form, so I more or less had to make up half of the bimester´s marks in the course of a week. I was sick with a stomach flu when my students performed "All I want for Christmas is you" by Mariah Carey at the annual "Jolly Christmas" event, but I heard they did well. We had choreographed an elaborate dance routine and spent hours practicing, and I am still waiting to see the recorded performance. But eventually, in the haze of the end of the bimester, the grades were miraculously handed in, a gift exchange successfully executed, and it seemed, at least, that my students had managed to show that they had learned a thing or two in the process. I even had a chance to read The Gift of the Magi, one of my favorite Christmas stories about the importance of giving presents which are meaningful rather than material, to my students. I had time to swim before the pool was closed for winter renovations until January, and I spent some little time at a new swimming spot outside the city at the site of a (very cold) natural spring.
After everything was said and done, and Cheeka and Kate had taken off for vacations, I surveyed the house, then a disaster zone, and decided to clean. The apartment I live in, aside from being paid for by the school, is quite nice, even though I had to fix the toilet flusher with a paper clip and we recently had a disaster with our ailing, ancient refrigerator when I tried to de-ice it with the hilt of a kitchen knife and accidentally removed the critical chunk which happened to be holding the coolant into the side of the refrigerator and Freon gas sprayed all over the kitchen. It had taken several weeks and a lot of spoilt food, but the school had eventually shelled out the money for a new fridge, which sat halfway wrapped in its cardboard box in the middle of the living room. Neither Kate nor Cheeka had dared touch it, but I was determined to deal with the situation before leaving for Christmas. Exhausted, and knowing all along that moving refrigerators by oneself is not generally a good idea, I broke a window moving our old refrigerator out into our own private enclosed alleyway, something which I have guiltily still not reported to the school. Somehow, dealing with a broken window (which, really, was quite a nonessential window, even for security purposes, and the current situation only adds to the house's ventilation) was something I could put off in my head until later, whereas the mess was not. However, the eventual result was that the house got clean and the kitchen looks much brighter, and I left on Saturday to come to Oaxaca knowing that when my roommates return they will be in for a pleasant surprise and a totally reorganized kitchen complete with new glassware and additional storage space.
I didn't pack much for vacation, my plan being to spend Christmas in Oaxaca and then as much time as possible at the beach swimming and playing in the water, but I did remember to bring the grocery bag brimming full of chocolates and other presents that my students excitedly unloaded on my desk on the last day of school. CEICO is certainly host to some of the wealthier people in Orizaba, and even as a new teacher I was showered with presents, including but not limited to a fancy black skirt, two purses, a wallet, a Christmas candle and mug, and an entire bag of chocolate, which I was sick off of for perhaps two days before I realized that even in my sugar-crazed delirium I was never going to get to the bottom of by myself.
And so on Friday I climbed aboard an ADO bus to Oaxaca with some clothes, a copy of Atlas Shrugged bookmarked by a drawing of the tattoo I (may) eventually get this break, and a bag of chocolate. It was an uneventful ride, which I spent mainly sleeping after such a frenzy of work, play, and chocolate-binging, and I arrived in Oaxaca without event. I knew that I was getting close when I saw a sign reading "Etla," a nearby town of whose existence I had known only from newspapers reporting troops stationed there during the political conflict, and a small piece of isolated graffiti on the back of a street sign which read, defiant in its smallness, "APPO."
Arriving at the ADO bus station, I felt inexplicably at home at the same instant that I inexplicably realized that I didn't have anywhere of my own to go and deposit my bag of chocolate, which was undoubtedly melting in the 80-degree, perfect-for-a-trip-to-the-beach weather. And so I sat down, a guest in my own city, made a few phonecalls before and set off to my former apartment to simply sit and await Brittany, who is now living in my room.
My landlords and their family welcomed me with open arms, ushering me, despite my keylessness, into their backyard, a show of typical Mexican hospitality in spite of what must surely have seemed to them an abrupt departure exactly five weeks before, and renewed an old offer for me to join them for Christmas dinner the next night, which I gratefully accepted.
From there I eventually met Brittany's parents, down in Mexico to visit for the holidays, and accompanied them to their hotel, not two doors down from my original Oaxaca homestay. From there, I met Emily, and we chatted for an hour while walking round in a large circle the size of the zocalo looking at radishes.
Wait… radishes?
December 23rd, aside from being my mom's birthday, is also Noche de los Rabanos, or Night of the Radishes, in Oaxaca, a celebrated event for which artisans bring in incredibly detailed sculptures of traditional Oaxacan people and events, as well as nativity scenes, made entirely out of radishes. Grated radishes, peeled radishes, carved radishes… figurines averaging a foot high, though some scenes were far more complex, guarded off. Beautiful artwork… made of radishes. Brittany and her family even apparently saw Ulysses, Oaxaca's bastard governor, ushered quickly through with a necessarily large entourage of police and reporters, an all-too-obvious attempt to show that the city is now "safe." And then, at maybe ten at night, the work is all taken down and families are let to roam around the zocalo, a big orchestra playing Christmas music in the background, a dream come true, happy families and tourists united in smiles and laughter in front of a backdrop of fresh colonial architecture.
If you know me at all, you know that last sentence was more than a little facetious. Let´s go back and talk about the city of Oaxaca for just a minute. It makes me feel vaguely uncomfortable. I would even go so far as to say that, in the context of the way I knew it earlier, I don't like it. It is quite artfully repainted, something rumored to have been funded not by the state but by the feds, all traces of earlier graffiti and suffering and pain buried under layer upon layer of new, brilliant colors and seemingly industrious storefronts. Ice cream vendors at every corner, new cobblestones where cars were once burned, new faces to old stores recently reopened, new everything. A giant Christmas tree lights the zocalo from above, and a nativity scene made from tin is on display amidst thousands of recently planted red poinsettia flowers. People frolic and bask in the sun with their children. Restaurants are occupied. `The economy is fine´, the city seems to be screaming with all its might. `We have recovered.´ A façade, I say.
Contrary to the idea that it is supposed to look better this way, that this is what Oaxaca really is and that it is happy, I don't much like it. It is as though one is in the presence of someone who is wearing far, far too much makeup, trying to be naturally cheerful but somehow just managing to look posed and premeditated. Tim asked me as I explained my discomfort today, "Is it that you like a city in conflict better than a city in peace?" No, I resolutely answer. After all, Orizaba is peaceful to the point of being boring, on many levels. There isn't much to do in the name of touristy attractions. And yet I love it. And, too, from this end I can see that this holiday season is one very large hope for the revitalization of Oaxaca, a very important time that I gladly contribute to on my vacation by posing as the average tourist in expensive restaurants sipping my overpriced coffee. It is simply that I enjoyed living in a city where there were no tourists, where I was not simply one in a crowd of ignorant sheep speaking every language but Spanish putzing around the zocalo for a photo op and awkwardly bargaining for shawls and pottery and t-shirts they do not know the value of. It all seems so fake, so horrendously fake. And yet, while I know that I will probably not ever be able to return to the Oaxaca I know to live the way I used to, I suppose I begrudgingly appreciate the changes which have occurred at lightning speed over the past five weeks because they mean happiness, of a sort, to a previously tortured city.
I only hope that this happiness is a permanent one. The teacher strikes are an annual event; or at least, they have been for the past six years. Who knows what will happen in May of 2007, whether the teachers will be allowed to return in their traditional way of protesting the ills of public education and the countrywide problem with under representation of traditional cultures and impoverished communities, or whether the reign of Ulyses, in all of his ridiculousness, will be allowed to continue unchecked until 2008, the next year for state elections. Calderon, thus far, seems to have proved himself an able president, in fact taking up some of the quite reasonable improvements suggested by his more liberal competitor Obrador, calling for recognition and support of communities such as those who spilled their souls in the form of sweat and tears into the streets of Oaxaca for six months while waiting for their voices to be acknowledged. Perhaps things will change. I cannot claim to know.
I spent Christmas eve day journaling by myself and later with Emily in the zocalo, talking and thinking about everything and nothing at once before retiring to our families for Christmas eve. I ate dinner with my already large family and perhaps fifteen guests, a truly multicultural mix as Javier and Enrique both seem to prefer girlfriends of the European persuasion and had them and their families over for the occasion as well. I sat next to a mildly boring electrical engineer (or something, I can't remember) named Adam (or something, I can't remember) from New Zealand (that much, at least, I remember), periodically exchanging jokes with Javier's girlfriend who was quite pleasant. After dinner, as if Christmas could be placed any more out of context than it already was in 80 degree weather with such a comical group, we hoised up two piñatas, and busted them open. I, the only American in the group, had the honor of being the one to break open the piñata that the women hit, after jokingly saluting in a general northward direction towards home and saying in Spanish, "United States, I apologize in advance if I represent you poorly." An old man from the Danish crowd broke open the second, which they had reserved, for some reason, for the men.
Today, Christmas, has passed without much event. I went down to the zocalo and enjoyed another leisurely breakfast, reading, taking it easy, and sitting in the sun listening to Christmas music. I called home. I didn't do anything. It was nice. Not exactly what I pictured a year ago when I first decided to move to Mexico and made the vow not to return for a year, coaxing myself into the idea of Christmas in Oaxaca. But nonetheless, things have been very nice. I have realized in the past two days that I haven't been on vacation in a full year, what with school, a nonexistent (by choice) graduation, working frantically to pay come down here, TESOL certification, and then work work work with my kiddies, even when it was only part time a draining job… summer simply did not exist for me this year. And yet here I am, seeing Mexico as perhaps it should be seen, with two weeks and a bundle full of cash marked "paid vacation" burning a hole into my pocket, while the sun shines and the wind whispers invitingly into my ear, "time to get a tan."
Thinking of you all on this Christmas day in sunny Mexico. I hope that everyone received at least one Magi Christmas gift, and had the opportunity to give one in return. Mine has been that I have all of you at home to think of, even three thousand miles away.

Greetings from... Orizaba?

2006-12-04T14:07:00.000-08:00

Well... it certainly has been a while, and I have promised time and time again to send an update email home, but somehow haven´t gotten around to it. Three weeks ago, I got fed up with the ongoing low level stress of never knowing whether I would actually have work on a given day in Oaxaca and, of my own volition, decided to leave. I had been browsing job listings online for quite some time with my roommates, more for fun than anything else, daydreaming about making big bucks in Asian countries or the Middle East where the salaries are higher. It was a bit of a game to us, but deep down we all privately knew that we could, potentially, have to leave if the school shut down. Emily (who would eventually take my place teaching at Cambridge) was out of work because the school I got my TESOL certification at was closed, and Cambridge director James kept closing John´s classes one by one without notice. Infuriated at how little control we had over the situation and the sheer ridiculousness of our daily existance, we rebelled by banding together and thinking out other options.

I was the first to really go crazy. I submitted my resume everywhere, and had incredibly good success- everyone, it seemed, wanted a teacher who had had the patience of living in Oaxaca so long and with such patience. I had mad dreams of teaching to Cairo, where I found a job listing which had excellent pay and a free airplane ticket both to and from Egypt. John talked more and more of China. Brittany decided after much ado to return home after Christmas to get an internship and then apply to grad school in the fall. Emily bought a ticket to go to Puebla and then stayed at the last minute in the hopes of staying for just a little longer and finding a new job.

When things happened, thought, they happened fast. I found a job and decided to leave on a Wednesday, told my director and my students on Thursday, packed Friday, and left on Saturday. Where I landed was CEICO elementary school, in a city called Orizaba in Veracruz state, and where they urgently needed an English teacher. The old teacher, it seems, was a former Peace Corps volunteer whose heart had been left behind in Kirgistan and who wanted desperately to leave Mexico and return to her students there. Few questions were asked; they needed a teacher, I needed a job. The political situation excused my abrupt departure from Oaxaca and I was able to obtain the job without the recommendation of my director (who certainly, given my position as one of the key leaders of the mini-revolution occuring at Cambridge Academy, would have been loathe to actually say anything positive about anything at all).

Orizaba is situated conveniently half way between Puebla and Veracruz City along a major highway, two and a half hours from each. It is also about a four and a half hour bus ride from Mexico City. Pico de Orizaba, the city´s main geographic feature, is one of many mountains (it is, indeed, already quite cold here) in the area. It is the third highest in North America after, of course, McKinley in Alaska and another mountain (Logan) in Canada of slightly lesser fame. I can see Pico de Orizaba from my schoolyard while I play basketball with my kids, shrouded in fog and covered with, yes, you named it: snow. Thrill-seeking backpackers have a total of perhaps five months out of the year to camp out and scale the peak while it is thusly covered, while the rest of the year it fades into the backdrop of the other, greener mountains.

I quite literally didn´t speak more than one or two syllables for perhaps my first two hours in Orizaba, so overwhelmed was I by the abruptness of my arrival and the sustained speech of my coworker and temporary roommate Kelly, who told me pretty much everything there was to know about everyone and everything in Orizaba and at CEICO at such a pace that I, exhausted from the bus ride, could simply not keep pace. During this deluge of introductions and information I was, however, introduced to one of my favorite aspects of Orizaba thus far: the pambazo. Pambazos, a local staple, are sandwiches on soft rolls, filled with beans and cheese and mayonnaise and either chorizo sausage, beef, or chicken. They are, in a word, delicious, and so, so, simple to make. And so, on my first day in Orizaba, I buried myself in a pambazo and my michelada (light beer with pepper flakes, not for the faint of heart) and listened as best as I could to my coworker rattle on about herself and the other teachers at school.

Eventually, of course, I began teaching, and learned things for myself. I am, as it happens, at the reins of both the docile, 12-student sixth grade and the hellish, 22-student (4 with documented ADD) fifth grade at CEICO, where I teach ESL, phonics, science, and periodically handwriting. My instruction is all in English, and after nearly three weeks teaching I have managed to keep most of my students in the dark about whether or not I actually speak Spanish, although it is difficult at times to pretend when they see or overhear me talking to some of my Mexican coworkers who do not, in fact, speak any English. I get along well with all of the other teachers, and have struck up an unlikely friendship with the Religion y Valores teacher, who, much to my chagrin and embarrassment and just a little to my amusement, has a crush on me. Because CEICO, as I neglected to mention earlier, is a private, wealthy, Caltholic school, and yes, Anna Jolley not only has to enforce morning and noon prayer, she also has to wear a uniform of blue slacks and orange, white or blue polo shirts, depending on the day of the week.

But all in all, the poor, non-Catholic, public-school educated, California hippie in me has not had difficulty acclimating to this new, more austere style of education. My students are appropriately questioning and curious, and the English department director loves that I take them outside for science labs rather than having them sit in the stuffy classroom all day. We have done labs to measure temperature changes, explore the physical properties of metals, and explore the structure of water and the other materials in photosynthesis and respiration. My students run laps if they misbehave, but I am appropriately reconciliatory during recess, when I flagrantly flout the yard duty schedule by leaving my post and actually playing basketball and soccer with my students. I don´t think there is much of a precedent for foresaking yard duty in order to actually play with students, and there is certainly no history of punishment for such an obvious violation of the rules. I don´t think anyone really knows what to do; as a result, thus far no one has complained. No one seems to care that I wear sneakers under my slacks, either. I think, really, that they are sufficiently pleased that my kids spend most of their time with me smiling.

I live, now, in an apartment with two of the other (mellower) English teachers at CEICO, and while our refrigerator is currently nonoperational and I had to fix the toilet with a paperclip the other day, the apartment is all in all quite comfortable, far nicer than that I lived in in Oaxaca. It has a small kitchen and livingroom/dining room space with enough space for our circle of friends of CEICO teachers and a few others to eat dinner or have a beer together after work if we so desire, and the best part is that the only part I have to pay for is cable for the TV and the phone bill because the school owns the actual house.

Thus far I have spent my time in Orizaba peacefully. I have, during my free time now not absorbed by the horrendously long Saturday classes I used to have in Oaxaca, also taken the opportunity to travel throughout Mexico a little more, and spent one weekend in D.F (Mexico City) to bid John adieu with a few other friends before his inevitable return to the states, and spent this past weekend (three days this time) exploring Olmec and Mayan ruins in Tabasco and Chiapas states respectively. Mexico City was phenomenal, and in the center of all the dangerous, evil slums and pollution that everyone has heard so much about, was a beautiful, green, friendly, safe city, with an amazing anthropology museum I could have spent a week at. I could easily see myself living there in the future. Considering its bad reputation, it was beautiful, and while the metro was terrifying, it was easy to get around and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Tabasco and Chiapas (Palenque, specifically, in the latter) were a more rural adventure, hours upon hours of scenic green that I alternately slept through and wondered at through the steamy glass windows of ADO bus after ADO bus with my Canadian roommate Cheeka. All in all, traveling is not very expensive, and I have certainly realized that Mexican history is far more extensive and diverse than I ever could have imagined. Even just seeing the Palenque ruins was life changing- old stepped pyramids shrouded in romantic mist amidst an enchanting jungle backdrop. I was quite pleased to be able to take the time to see the waterfall where Predator was filmed on that same excursion, too. I could write pages about it all. One can easily see where the inspiration for so many playscripts comes from.

I periodically get phonecalls from my friends still working in Oaxaca, about riots or looting or small clashes between the PFP and the APPO. It seems so far away now, a tidbit in the newspapers I read while I sit at Cuahemaloya or Italian Coffee drinking cappuchinos with my friends, bundled up in long sleeves against the rain outside. December 1st, when Calderon was inaugurated and a key date politically, passed more or less without mishapand cities there, but after my abrupt departure, schools in other parts Mexico are on the minds of all of my friends. I think that after January the numbers of our old crew will have been reduced to one, while everyone else moves on to greener pastures and better jobs. In the meantime, I plan on spending Christmas in Oaxaca, partially because I feel that I owe it to that city to see it through its time of crisis, and partially because the friends I made in that situation have been absolutely irreplaceable in my experiences here in Mexico thus far.

So, to those of you at home who knew that I had moved on and were awaiting an update, or to those who didn´t and can finally breathe a sigh of relief, know that I am well. I love my students, and look forward to every day teaching- it is certainly nice to be able to have just two classes of students all week rather than six different classes for an hour at a time as I did in Oaxaca, and the support system that comes along with being a real teacher at a real colegio (elementary, middle, and ninth grade) is excellent. I feel like this, what I am doing every day here in Orizaba, is what I came here to do. My Spanish is finally fluid, and though I still maintain that I am something short of fluent, I am on my way. I have to say, I haven´t done justice to the incredible experiences I have had here in Orizaba thus far, haven´t even begun to explain how amazing and brilliant and frustrating all at once my students are, or how much I love the challenge of working with them. I haven´t even begun to get into the politics of my school, or the plans for the chapel they are building on school premises, and I haven´t even attempted to scratch the surface of the people who make my daily existance: my coworkers, my friends, my boss, even, and the puppy named Lulu who lives at my house and who we think is a French poodle but aren´t sure because we haven´t cut her hair for the first time yet. All that, I am sure, will come later. But for now, I guess I needed to at least give it a try.

Take care,
Anna

Pictures

2006-11-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

Pictures of Dia de los Muertos and the current situation in Oaxaca are online at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anjolley/

Since I wrote last...

2006-10-30T16:19:00.000-08:00

I closed the computer. Ingredients were emerging from the kitchen for the construction of spaghetti sauce, and we all ran into the kitchen for the various stages of cutting, sautéing, and tasting the various stages of lunch. When that was finished, and our appetites properly sated, we settled down to watch a movie and perhaps take an afternoon nap in order to recuperate from the stress of the week’s events. Helicopters still circled the sky, but it became apparent that they were serving no real function other than recon and the shepherding ordinary people such as us back into their homes. We went to a local store and stocked up on candy and made popcorn.
As Emily washed the last few plates and John fussed over the wires to hook up the VCR, the sound of helicopters grew louder. At long last idle and somewhat restless, my ears instantly perked at the intensifying sound and I looked out of the window. The helicopters were circling lower—alarmingly so—and a billowing cloud of thick black smoke now emerged from the city below; from where, I could not see. The base of the plume was buried behind trees to the southwest of the city in the direction of the road from Etla where the troops were stationed. I ran to the roof, exasperated, a bowl of popcorn in one hand, straining my eyes to get a better glimpse. The city is in flames, I thought, scarcely believing my eyes. But what is burning?
The others joined me. We turned on the University radio station and listened as they announced the entry of the PFP (Policia Federal Preventativa) into the southern part of the city with full riot gear and tear gas. The Federales. The situation we had all been preparing for two weeks ago but which never happened. The APPO was standing firm, the radio announced, trying to prevent the military from removing the blockades, but this time they were up against seriously armed men, and what use are a few sticks and stones against assault rifles? Compañeros y Compañeras, the radio blared, La PFP esta entrando la ciudad. Este no es una esfuerza pacifica, pero no respondas en la misma manera. Urgimos que bloquean su paisaje fisicalmente por la calle si es necesario, usando los cuerpos. Asemblamos en el zocalo. (Companions, the PFP is entering the city. This is not a pacifist movement but do not respond in kind. We urge you to block their passage physically in the street if necessary, using your bodies. We assemble in the zocalo.). No shots were being fired, but the suggestion of tear gas and the presence of guns sent shivers up our spines.
“Cerro del Fortin,” I said. “We have to see what’s going on.” Cerro is the site where Guelaguetza (the traditional summer festival and tourist trap, cancelled for the first time in history this year because of political strife) is held, a giant auditorium at the top of a long, steep set of stairs on the same hill as the Crespo house. From the road surrounding the site, you can see the entire city. In all honesty, I had only been by the stadium twice, once during daylight in a car on the way to Monte Alban and a second time late at night with John taking loops around the neighborhood once after Jessica and I were robbed on our way home. That latter view of the site at night, a foreboding and markedly empty skeleton of a building, looking at that late hour like an ancient Roman coliseum lit only by moonlight, had given me the willies. But I knew even then that it was arguably the single best place from which see the entire city, and we needed a panoramic view.
At the moment, I was wearing a pair of Jessica’s overalls, so we packed up all our candy and the portable radio into my generous jean pockets and set out. I still carried the bowl of popcorn, piling handfuls of it into my mouth at a time, less because I was hungry and more because I needed something to do and eating seemed about as good as anything else to fill in the space that sanity had left when it fled.
As we mounted the stairs, we were joined by vecinos (neighbors) from all different directions, each looking as perplexed as the next. For a while, our view was hidden by trees, but when we finally stepped up the last of the cement steps to the road and the stadium behind, the sight was nearly too incredible to believe.
A giant plume of smoke came up from what we could only imagine to be the highway called Periferico in the southern part of the city. Smaller plumes rose up in a row behind it, marking what we would later gather to be the path of the troops as they entered the city from the southwest. The number of helicopters in the sky had increased to three, and they were circling in low swoops, guiding troop action below. John, ever the avid birdwatcher and a co-conspirator of mine in my scientific study of Mexican ants, had brought along a small pair of field glasses, and we took turns gazing at the city through the small lenses. We couldn’t see much, except the black smoke floating ever higher skyward, a stark contrast against the clear blue overhead. And when one fire seemed to go dim, another cloud of smoke could be seen farther north taking its place. We heard on the radio that the military had taken several churches and important buildings, and that the zocalo would be next. Sporadic groups came and went, eyes ever affixed on the city below. A woman waved a white flag back and forth at the circling helicopters. People from all areas of the city shined mirrors at them in household mirrors, trying everything they could to make it harder to navigate. I myself wished to be aboard one of the low flying craft, so I could see what on earth was really going on. My feet itched to find out, but better sense kept us rooted to our seats safe above the city.
The popcorn, the Snickers, the Milky Way, the marshmallow pop, and the two small bags of sour Mexican jellybean thingies were long since eaten. It was unanimously decided that I, as the chief addict, should continue to carry the empty popcorn bowl as we continued along the roadside wall from spot to spot watching the smoke dissipate into the sky. We compulsively stalked the helicopters, watching one land in Parque del Amor downtown, the place the radio said that people were being detained and arrested. I spent perhaps twenty minutes watching people on an overpass watching the helicopters as ominous looking men—or, at least, as ominous as men could be from several miles away and through field glasses—transported packages back and forth from a truck into a helicopter.
James arrived on his motorcycle. Ever the irresponsible employer, he had spent the morning looking for the “action”, and in spite of the grimness of the situation I could scarcely bite my tongue and refrain from chiding him for his error the night before in guessing it would come from the north. Anyways, he had eventually found his way into the thick of things, and indeed his first words as he walked towards the group were, “I got run over by a tank.” Indeed, he was limping a little, but I couldn’t see how a tank could have been involved in the incident: he was, at any rate, all in one piece.
The news was, on the whole, what we expected, but it was nice to hear a firsthand account of the situation. James had been taking pictures of everything, and his foot had been run over by one of the giant bulldozing truck/tanks which had spent the day moving literally inch by inch into the city through protesters and barricades. He had been sprayed with high powered water hoses from these tanks, though miraculously it did not seem that there had been any shooting, only the occasional rumor of teargas. The military trucks were moving men and supplies and the helicopters were coordinating movements from above. What we were witnessing from our lofty view of the city was the burning of buses and cars (a trademark statement/confusion tactic of the APPO), gas tanks and tires smudging black smoke across the sky.
James departed again to download pictures from his digital camera onto someone’s computer. After a while the sun sank lower and shone in our eyes; we shifted on our feet and realized that we were thirsty, sunburnt, and that everyone needed to pee. It was decided that nothing more was going to happen, at least for the time being, and that we should go home.
As made this decision and got up, a group of unfortunate tourists did the same, maybe fifteen of us in all standing and walking away from the sight of the city towards the stairs below. And perhaps because we were the ones who had had the foresight to carry the radio and field glasses, perhaps because we were foreigners and had a different intuitive sense of the situation, and perhaps simply because everyone was on edge and thinking the same thing we were, as we rose to go, everyone started to run. Someone shouted that the police were coming. People jumped into cars and sped away. Some looked seriously downhill at the prospect of jumping down the hill into hiding. It was sheer group mentality, and in reality, nothing had happened except for the fact that a number of us had all decided to leave at once. But everyone was on edge, and our instincts told us, unanimously, that being ready to run was a good thing in this situation.
Eventually, we got home. Nightfall brought a strange quiet to the city of Oaxaca. The smoke from the burning vehicles settled down on the city from above the way smog does in the valley of Los Angeles, and we could smell it as it settled. Finally, we watched our movie, something appropriately light and comedic so we could just sit and not think. Everyone was drained. My eyes were starting to hurt from wearing my contacts for three days in a row and we were all feeling dirty and exhausted from being in the sun by the road all day. John snuck down to the zocalo without telling anyone to take a look, and came back with the report that the PFP had taken the zocalo and were camping out there, asleep on their body shields. We watched the evening news, checked our emails, and tried to make sense of it all. Among the relentlessly circulating media were pictures of a man throwing a rat at the federal police and public health officials drawing blood from APPO members for artful protests in the form of bloodied T-shirts. Among the looping footage on TV were stills of a young boy, 15, killed by a tear gas canister exploded at close range. Depressed, we brushed our teeth and took showers, reluctant to go to bed but too tired and emotionally drained to be functional for anything else.
At some point, James came back and started typing furiously on Brittany’s computer, cursing in his quiet, understated voice that the newscasts were full of shit and that the newscasters were bendejos (more or less, dickheads or assholes, depending on who you ask, but in all cases negative). He brewed coffee. We slumped a little. Slowly, we filtered off to bed one by one. Three helicopters came and made quick rounds of the city, and I fell asleep on the couch, James in the background noiselessly plotting things on a map, slamming instant coffee, and typing.
This morning I again awoke early, and on first sight nothing was remiss in the city. A few cars cruised by on nearby Crespo street, though for the most part things were quiet. James was gone. On first inspection all our email boxes are full with worried messages, and we gather that headlines about Oaxaca have made the front page of the New York Times. I bury my head in my hands, not sure what to say, how to explain the situation, or even to begin to answer the questions that come at me from all quarters, and yet thankful that there are so many people at home who are following my misadventures and are willing to help get me home if need be.
Helicopters begin again at nine, but we know from the rumor mill that at least for now things are safe. Somehow, Britney and John have the motivation to make oatmeal for breakfast, and we eat and pack up for the trip to mine and Emily’s houses and the store for food and supplies and then inevitably by the zocalo to survey the damage.
In a group, wearing my own clothes and packing a camera, I feel much more secure than I would have yesterday were I to have ventured out into the city. My family here, as it turns out, is relaxed and rational about the situation; Emily’s host mom seems to be on the verge of collapse, her daughter still panicky about the presence of so much smoke in the sky at night and the police banging on doors late looking for “hiding APPO members.” Taking these two perspectives in mind, from Emily’s house, we set out for the zocalo.
The zocalo is entirely blocked off by military. At first I approach timidly, my heart in my throat, but as I take stock of the situation I realize that I am not, in fact, the only person taking pictures. Media representatives and local onlookers are swarming all over the place, taking pictures of burnt out buses and the austere line of the federales lined up with clear plastic shields. Their faces are youthful and soft behind the harshness of their masks, and they look bored. I see two of them through my lens looking at me and trying not to giggle a few feet away; they are about my age. They are trying to be grownups and failing miserably, giving in to the enjoyment of watching a guera take pictures of their encampment, something which to them must seem commonplace and even boring. Finally, I venture, as I blatantly aim my camera at them, “¿Como estan? ¿ Abburidos?” They giggle. “Un poco,” one confesses quietly. We laugh, and I am struck with a strange desire to offer to go buy them a Coke or something: it is very hot, and they look uncomfortable in their full, black, riot gear and heavy masks.
The next intersection is more of the same: men of about my age standing behind shields looking uncomfortably hot and trying to remain serious and calm as onlookers take pictures and shout the occasional offensive comment. Burnt out buses and cars line the streets, and I remark that what once served the APPO in their blockading of the center against the military now serves the counter-purpose of blocking the military from the potential of the invading APPO.
We snap pictures and walk the circumference of the zocalo for a while, and I am much braver in my questions, asking the federales how they are, whether they are hot, and how they feel. Some do not respond. Others give rigid, rehearsed, patriotic answers. Others confess quickly, quietly that yes they are a little bored, and yes, it’s a little hot. But all seem to be in the hand of someone larger, giving orders that they do not understand, and speak hushedly lest their superiors should overhear.
Eventually, we have seen enough, and go home. Jessica returns from her weekend excursion and sits playing soft music on the porch, singing softly. Emily naps. I write. Helicopters come and go. We get up to eat and make our plans for the evenings. We make phonecalls home, write emails. The plan hasn’t changed, we don’t know what to say, we don’t know what’s going to happen or even really what’s happening right now. It’s getting dark. But we’re at home, and we’re okay. For now, it’s more waiting.

Just another instance of nothing happening...?

2006-10-29T09:25:00.000-08:00

I awoke this morning to realize that I had slept the night through; the sun beamed down full force through Jessica’s bedroom windows. Why isn’t the city in flames? I wondered to myself. I rolled over and ran my fingers through my newly short hair and asked, unimpressed, to no one in particular, “Is this just another instance of nothing happening?”
“I think so,” Emily said from across the room. “Still, my nerves can’t handle it.”
It didn’t seem strange to me to find her standing there at the window, nor did it alarm me that I was in fact in someone else’s bed in someone else’s house and wearing someone else’s clothes. Whenever rumors begin to fly through the city about political chaos and conflict at the barricades we all find our way to the Crespo house one way or another; it isn’t uncommon to pass the night on the couch or comfortably in Jessica’s enormous bed downstairs. This latter circumstance was the case last night, and so I awoke at 8:15 in Jessica’s room with Emily standing gazing out the window at Oaxaca on yet another lazy Sunday and it did not seem strange at all the Jessica herself wasn’t there.
A journalist from Indymedia in New York was killed in my city two days ago, one of four to be shot by plainclothes policemen in a systematic raid of barricades on Friday organized by the state government. The move was one of unparalleled stupidity, and all in all it was precisely what we have come to expect from Ulyses Ruiz Ortiz, Oaxaca state governor currently banned in his own capital city and on the run from insurgent forces who have had control of the city for the past five months. His actions were in stark contrast to the current situation in the rest of the city, which had led us to believe that things would soon return to normal in the confused city.
Friday began another three-day economic paro or huelga (strike) by businesses in the city. The APPO put up extra blockades so as to be especially annoying. It was a quiet day, one which I passed almost entirely reading in my hammock after my morning class was finished. Call it foresight, call it clairvoyance, but sometimes I just know when it’s a good day to stay home. By mid afternoon we knew that something had come to pass which was wholly unexpected: local police had systematically, overtly, come to remove the barricades. In the resulting mayhem and confusion—protesting teachers had all but returned to classes and given up their quest, at least on the local level, and there seemed in fact to be no reason for additional pressure from the government—several people were shot, including Brad Will, a 36-year old leftie journalist arrived in Oaxaca perhaps three weeks ago to cover events here.
Saturday was shrouded in tension; we cancelled our Halloween party at the last minute as perhaps only four or five students showed up to each class, including mine which usually has twenty rowdy, jostling eleven year olds eager to do anything but learn English on their Saturday morning. The softspoken director of my school, perhaps 27 and originally from Cincinatti, Ohio, himself an APPO sympathizer, interrupted class to call all the teachers together to organize a meeting after work at the downtown building. He was calm and a little shaken: as it turns out, he had written once or twice for Indymedia and had been in correspondence with Will before his arrival in the city.
The full meeting with all my coworkers was brief. Mostly James, our director, talked for a while and reiterated the emergency contingency plan; the rest of us looked at one another, half bored and half nervous. The other teachers at Cambridge Academy also happen to be my dearest friends; we have independently discussed the situation to death and as I looked around the table I could guess with a fair amount of certainty exactly what was going on in each of their heads.
After the meeting we walked to the nearly empty organic market and ordered seven wheatburgers from one of the last closing stalls, sitting in front of the fishpond and chatting. Loud fireworks banged throughout the afternoon. We then in various groups wandered, as we always do, to the Crespo house, the closer of the two buildings that we as teachers inhabit in the city, because it has wireless internet where we can follow the news and all sleep in the same place if need be.
The night passed uneventfully. Periodically we looked up to see airplanes, but none of them were military planes. Loud, frantic wedding music blared into the twilight and the night resonated as it always does with periodic booms of ubiquitous Mexican fireworks. Nothing seemed remiss except for the somber attitude of the city and the deserted streets. Bored, we cut my hair to a boyish crop, gave Britney punk rocker bangs, and gave Emily a bob minus the garish bangs typical of that style, which we kept long. John offered to let us glue the extra hair onto his own head, the front of which hasn’t seen hair for a while, but we didn’t have any crazy glue and gave up the mission in favor of playing hearts and listening to music, our ears secretly attuned to helicopters or other unusual sounds in the night which never came.
But the night passed without event, and in fact I slept peacefully. Breakfast consists of quesadillas from the local market and Nescafe instant coffee. We laugh at the fact that we are so accustomed to instant coffee. Everything seems to be an ordinary Sunday. Only today, we hear the thumping of helicopter propellers in the sky, harbinger to the eerie sight of helicopters circling, circling, circling the city in their lazy arcs. It is a sound familiar to all of us by now, and it draws us out onto the roof to look. Sure enough, they are circling the sky. Two, shiny new ones. Not the older ones of a few weeks ago. A sign of the federal police. I shudder in spite of myself. I don’t know if I can ever look at the powerful creatures the same way anymore—such an incredible, graceful phenomenon of modern physics, and yet so terrifying that my hair stands up on end as I see them and I feel adrenaline surge to my limbs. I think of Chris Rea and his fascination with aviation, back in the states somewhere living his normal life, and of the days we spent putting together model planes in high school. Then, I secretly wished to know more about them, so that perhaps one day I could design them. Today, I am simply confused.
Our boss arrives, and between gulps of instant coffee and the rush to find new batteries for his camera, he announces that there are new mentions of peace talks, which is a relief. We now know that there are 3000 troops in barracks in Etla and 200 poised to block the road to Mexico City. Local police are still in plainclothes throughout the city, but for the most part they have no real meaning. It is the federal troops which could, when pressed, do real damage, armed with riot gear, tear gas, and everything else necessary to have a very violent “nonviolent” intervention. But today, nothing seems to be in the works—only the neighbors flashing large mirrors into the sky to harass the two military helicopters still circling the southeastern part of the city.
James scoots off on his motorcycle, APPO identity card/“press pass” in hand, to check out the barricades, promising to keep us posted via cell phone of what is actually happening. I fuss after him for a few minutes, making sure he has an emergency backup plan and that what he is doing is not actually stupid. When he finally turns to go, I shake my head and bite my lip, laughing to myself at the fact that I should feel like such a mother to a man who is in fact my boss. In a sense I wish I could go with him, but I know that to be stupid. He knows the city and its people far better than I do, and I am in that respect content to stay at home at the computer, listening to the University radio station with my instant coffee, typing and plotting things out on the giant map of the city spread out beside me, following things as best I can while, as always, taking things with a grain of salt and a dose of courage.
I know that the news at home sounds bad. Fox issued a written statement recently saying that he would now use force if necessary. We made the Americas section of the New York Times again today (actually a very good, fairly accurate article, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/americas/29mexico.html?n=Top/News/World/Countries%20and%20Territories/Mexico). Headlines and photos look horrendous, and are, as usual, exaggerated. But I say—slowly and cautiously, with as level a head as possible—that things are okay. That I am okay. I will know when things go wrong, when it is time to switch into panic mode and get the hell out. The system of action here is delicately calibrated for appropriate planning and response. And I have—we have—a system in place for if and when it comes time to leave.
As always, I have two hundred dollars in cash stashed in my room next to my passport and my FM3 visa ready to go in case of emergencies, photocopies of all of my important documents, including credit cards and extra identification. My cell phone is stock full of phone numbers to call in case of an emergency, people with cars and safe places to stay. And in the meantime, the owner of my school has a home in the hills that we can leave to in the event of a personal crisis or the need to escape for a while, and a house in Puerto Escondido in case we simply feel like taking a week off. I am okay. The weather outside is fantastic, my instant coffee for some reason tastes good in spite of its cheapness, and the company of my friends is unparalleled in its comfort and honesty. I shall spend this afternoon, like so many other afternoon recently, listening to insurgent radio and watching helicopters do recon over my city.
Today, incidentally, marks the conclusion of my fourth month in Mexico.

Namaste,
Anna

helicopters and swimming pools

2006-10-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

We were to have had a party on Saturday. Nothing special, mostly Cambridge teachers and a few of the older students with whom we could share hors d'oeuvres and some mescal to fight off the nonexistent cold.

While I actually didn’t live at the hosting house, I was considered a resident because I lived there a while ago, before half of the current residents moved in, and so went early on in the afternoon to help prepare. This consisted mostly in sitting on the cement roof in a hammock, drinking familiar-sized Coronas and reading Neruda poems aloud with my friend and fellow teacher John. One of us would read and the other would sit and stare thoughtfully into the sky, making appreciative noises at any of the many particularly moving passages. It was an incredibly beautiful day: blue sky overhead, lush green plants swaying in a light wind, and the pleasant, mellow company you can only find among real friends.

The helicopters were a total surprise and completely incongruous. At around six, two of them emerged with an unpleasant drone from the southernmost part of the sky, from the general direction of the airport. One tailed the other as they flew low, making wary loops around the city. The first lap we could only sit and stare at the grey camouflage above our heads with the rest of the city. Nicolas and Veronica, the house’s landlords and frequent visitors, flew outside from where they had been working and stared in amazement. “Federal police,” Nicolas said. “It’s about time. I hope they shoot every last one of them.” We gasped in surprise but could not in all honesty blame him. The city is in economic crisis, businesses are closing, people are fed up with protesters and barricades in the street.

On the third lap we could see the word MARINA in big black letters on the bottom of each of the two choppers, indicating that the they were actually not federal police but the Marines. They circled around ominously once more and then left amidst a barrage of warning fireworks. The APPO signals, which we have all memorized by now, are one burst for “hey what’s up?” two for “you might want to pay attention” and three for “report to HQ, the war’s on.” Today the signals were coming hard and heavy in sets of three from the various base camps, sometimes one right on top of the other, a barrage of nonsensical messages. Church bells, another ancient system of warning typical to smaller towns, tolled incessantly. The city was in chaos.

“The last time they used helicopters was June 14th when they dropped tear gas,” John commented. “This isn’t good.” After failed attempts at negotiation this past week, panic shopping on Wednesday to precede business strikes on Thursday and Friday, and a passed governmental deadline for the APPO to withdraw, we could only think that the time had come for the city to once again be shrouded in tear gas and terror. Tempers were wearing thin. Fox had sworn to solve the conflict before he leaves office in November. No one really believed him, but perhaps this was a first step.

We watched as the helicopters came and went again and then were replaced by a military plane, ancient and clunky but equally ominous. They’re trying to scare people into their homes, we thought. Showing they’re playing hardball this time. And yet nothing more came of the event. No teargas, no violent outbreaks. But the rest of the night we were on edge. So was the city, which was quiet except for fireworks, hushed voices, and false cries of alarm. “This country has a surplus of fireworks,” Jessica commented drily, as we jumped to our feet for perhaps the tenth time in a row to look at the smoky plumes disappearing into the twilight. Night fell and fireworks from the city below kept bursting in periodic spurts, as though perhaps we hadn’t noticed that the world was about to end and were interested in finding out from the APPO´s own strange brand of morse code.

“I guess that means no one’s coming to our party,” I said grimly. “I hope no one minds sharing a bed, because I’m not walking home right now.”

And yet several people did show up. It was a horrid assortment of people, everyone on edge and feeling somewhat awkward, alternating between pointedly commenting on the situation and pointedly not commenting on the situation, which was almost worse. We tried playing cards, but no one was in the mood and none of the Mexicans knew how to play save one, who didn’t really but insisted on telling everyone how to play nonetheless. Soon everyone left the table except for me and the guy who sells shallots at the organic market, who sat too far too close to me at the end of the long table and drooled at me from perhaps a foot away. I’m still not sure who invited him. “What a wonderful accent you have,” he crooned. “You are so beautiful.” “Tell me the best way to learn English.” “Practice a whole freaking lot,” I said flatly. It’s a classic routine, all too familiar, and I found myself infuriated for once instead of patient and somewhat flattered. It wasn’t even mildly entertaining. Couldn’t he see there were more important things going on in the world than wooing a disinterested gϋera? “You have to help practice speaking,” he begged. I pointedly ignored him, shuffling the deck of cards over and over, trying to mark and then cut Aces and failing miserably. He kept rambling. Irritated, I got up and went outside without making excuses. Not long thereafter I decided it was time for bed.

Sunday was a gloomy day. The morning brought more helicopters and airplanes, and the whole city seemed devoid of cheerfulness. It was too hot. Everything seemed grim, everyone seemed upset. No one knew what to do. It seemed stupid to pretend it was a normal day, and yet going through the motions of everyday existence was the only way to pass the time. We ate breakfast. I made a peach cobbler while everyone else took naps. We ate the cobbler. We made small talk, checked our emails, and looked for news on the internet. I carted a copy of The Lost World around the house with me, walking aimlessly upstairs and downstairs, thinking that somehow, sometime I would start reading it, but the inspiration never came. I wanted to go home to sit in my hammock but my house felt a million light years away, and it felt saner to be in the company of friends. Eventually in desperationwe caved in to our confusion and our American ness and ordered pizza, something I didn’t even know you could do here, and watched Magnolia. By the end when the frogs fall from the sky, it didn’t even seem all that unusual. I don’t think I would have been that surprised had it happened outside at the same time it did on television. Eventually I went home, feeling grimy in borrowed clothes and not having showered for a day and a half.

Today, the local paper confirms that there are choppers, troops, and helicopters in Guatulco, “a long drive but a short plane ride away.” And still, no one knows if this isn’t just a really big bluff. No official statements have been made, no intentions declared. When the APPO attempted to assassinate Ulyses last Sunday at El Camino Real (a hotel two of my friends just happened to be touring at the time of the attack), they specifically chose a day of rest in which most people would be safe in their homes. No one is looking for a bloodbath here. And yet it has been three days of helicopters circling, circling, circling as we eat, walk to work, and go about our daily routines. Nothing has happened. Fireworks go off at all hours of the night. Our director insists that he has connections in the APPO and that nothing will go wrong. Without being morbid I know that he will be the first one to die or be arrested if it does, a single white man with something to prove in a sea of Mexican rebels.

I got a membership at the pool today after three months dry. It was a long time coming. And yet I knew I needed it to keep my sanity in these strange times. The water felt miraculous, and the grime on the bottom reminded me of Clark’s pool before it was remodelled. An odd thing to be comforted by, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, puzzling at the floating debris as I passed it at every lap. I hardly even noticed that I was the only white person there, and didn’t once think of the troubles in the outside world even once. My soul felt at peace. Never mind the outrageous expense; never mind my aching shoulders and newly clicking tendonitis; never mind that my suit, once several sizes too small and nearly impossible to put on, slid easily over my torso after over three months of walking everywhere and living off a simple Mexican diet. The calm turquoise radiated with light, and as I finally settled into my breathing pattern—hold, bubbles, breathe, hold, bubbles, breathe, hold, bubbles, breathe—my body relaxed and my mind shut off. I finally felt at home, there in that expensive bath of chemicals and clear blue water. I was able to go to work this afternoon and not feel panicked, and everything made sense again. I even listened to the rantings of my overbearing German roommate about how naïve our boss is to the whole situation with something akin to sympathy, nodding and flipping through my French books as I did so.

So, well… I’m okay. Things are strange but not dangerous. Or at least, not at the moment. At my prompting, we are having a meeting/discussion about all of this at work tomorrow, and we have developed an emergency contingency plan as the result of my German roommate’s hysterics this morning, which were apparently not just for my benefit but that of everyone else at work as well. I live in one of only two houses in the city that Cambridge teachers live in; my best friends live in the other. I am well connected to any news of federal movement by my former coordinator Anna Barto, who teaches English to Oaxaca’s airport director, and any movement of the APPO by my director, who apparently has something to prove to himself and therefore has adopted the cause. I will keep you posted on how things unfold.

Anna

Noticias

2006-09-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hello, all… a brief update and some rambling about things in Mexico, not necessarily in that order. Feel free to skip to the end if you´re short on time.

Friday is my favorite day of the week. It seems to be the favorite day of the week of the internet café guy, too, though he celebrates it, as he celebrates every other day, by sleeping in until 10:30 when the sign on the door clearly says 9:00, so that I can't just conveniently stop by on my way home from work but have to double back later after killing time by drinking too much coffee. But today somehow I was nonplussed by the tardiness of Mexican time, which seem to apply to all establishments except street vendors and beggars, who are at work 24 hours per day.

As I said, Fridays are my favorite day of the week. Once upon a time this might have been because they offered the prospect of two whole days free of work and thinking, the opportunity to escape responsibility and reality for an entire weekend at a stretch, but given that I work seven hours on Saturdays now, I can hardly imagine that that's the case anymore. Rather, I think I enjoy Fridays because I do work in the mornings, from 8 to 9, and then have the rest of the day free to wander around the city and try to get lost. Of course, I have long since stopped being able to be truly lost, especially since I often carry a map with me anyway (damn Clark's geography department!). But I still wander around new streets and loiter in different places, sometimes to the enjoyment and sometimes to the annoyment of the store and restaurant owners in my own fresa (translation: ritzy? snobby? nice?) Colonia Reforma.

Today for entertainment, I spent a whopping $10, walking around the market building near my school and cheering up street vendors by chatting and buying their goods, one item at a time, each thing from a different person. I never get tired of walking through the markets here, seeing the fresh fruit and vegetables stacked one on top of the other in gorgeous rows, red strawberries and green choyotes (no translation- round spiny squash-tasting things?) and yellow platanos (bananas), ripe and plump and vibrant, just waiting to be painted… perhaps someday I will get to this. Somehow it's altogether different from American markets, where everything is sterile and in plastic bags and your groceries are your own private business. Here, grocery shopping is an enterprise, a battle, a ritual. You have to bring your A-game or you go home with something that resembles a chicken chopped up by a seven year old with plastic picnic utensils, or a shriveled cactus that you're not sure how to peel, let alone eat.

So today I began with something familiar: tlayudas (big, flat, round tortillas), a staple which I didn't need but bought nonetheless because they are so delicious. The tlayuda woman was short and dark and hunched and beautiful, her eyes luminous behind her wrinkled skin. She smiled at me when I bought her goods, it being early in the morning yet for so unexpected a sale. I then continued on to copal, a miraculous resin which supposedly keeps away insects when burned and with which I entertain myself at night using the flame from my candles. I then bought a selection of granola, which is absolutely amazing down here and served with yoghurt and honey. I bought quesillo, a Oaxacan cheese which is somewhat similar to Mozzarella cheese but far better, and then, remembering my granola, proceeded to buy yoghurt. I lingered a while over the bread selections, because there are so many vendors selling it and because I didn't actually need any, but eventually settled on some soft round loaves that taste good with quesillo and beans in a kind of Mexican pizza they sometimes serve here. All in all it was fabulous, and I felt like a child at a candy store, as I always do, my eyes wide, shiny round pesos burning a hole in my pocket until I had to spend them to alleviate the burden.

My final purchase was a brave one, something I haven't bought in quite a while: a newspaper. I even chose the liberal rag, Noticias, now operating outside the city because of the current crisis (not sure why, the city is now run by leftists). I have intentionally avoided the news for a while now because it's so damn wrong all the time, but things have been calmer lately, I've been able to sleep at night, and I wanted to get an idea of what is stirring and how the plans for an alternative government are doing, at least according to the socialists.

I have to say, the paper made me laugh. I sat at my kitchen table at home, listening to mariachi music along with the guy doing construction in our complex, reading Noticias and drinking tea, and the sheer ridiculousness of the situation finally dawned on me. Never mind I walk to work past both APPO stakeouts and uniformed military with assault rifles and a scary-looking green jeep. Reading the newspaper, it all seemed to make sense. A march beginning in Etla yesterday walked the first 25 kilometers of the five hundred and something it takes to walk to Mexico City, protesters yelling, "This march is going to arrive in DF (Mexico City)!" According to my calculations, it will take the better part of a month for this to happen, while the rest of the country waits, bored, picking their noses and walking to work over rubble. On the same page, glaring out is a picture of lame duck Vicente Fox and president-elect Filipe Calderón standing too far apart, Calderon seeming rotund and almost obscenely short in comparison to Fox's lanky figure, his round glasses making him look more like an elderly gentleman at a wine tasting than the future president of Mexico. Next, a picture of "the APPO" and "the magisterio" parading around in matador costumes in a political cartoon that I clearly didn't get. An article on potholes. Elaborately overstated opinions in the Editorial section. Calls for peace. Calls to arms. Apparently the phrase for bloodbath in Spanish is " baño de sangre," which to me means bloody bathroom. But why not? This is Mexico, and no one's really sure who the President is anyways, let alone our state Governor. There's no police and no government in the city and we don't really care because the APPO takes care of it. Either that or we complain a lot about it just for fun. Just ask the periodistas: they make up news as it comes into their heads, just like the protesters do on the stolen radio stations. Soap boxes everywhere.

So that's the news: there is no news. No one knows what's going on. Just listen, and if you do it long enough, you'll hear what you want. Everything's going on. Nothing's going on. It's all happening at once. Ulyses is about to regain power. Ulyses is about to be assassinated. We're still deciding on how we want to end this one, but we're taking our sweet time doing it. This isn't the US, there are no deadlines. The internet cafes don't even open until noon if the owner went out for mezcal the night before. Just try organizing a revolution. We're just waiting. But I've got my tlayudas and my copal, so I'm good to go in the meantime.

Vasconcelos/Periferico blockade

2006-09-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

In recent weeks, I have spent much time looking long and hard down “Calz. E Vasconcelos”-- the northern half of the Periferico loop-- with curiosity, wondering what lie beyond the bus blockades to the South. I had walked the street perhaps once before, trying to get my bearings long before I actually lived in Colonia Reforma to the north of the city. Somehow, however, the blockades looked menacing, and I did my best to put off the compulsion to walk down the street. No, Anna. Dangerous.

Today, as luck would have it, I stumbled upon this very street, except from the southern end. Buses circumnavigate the entire area every time they drive from my neighborhood downtown, and to be honest, until today I wasn’t even sure where the long line of blockades ended. I myself always walk in another direction, through a pleasant cobblestone neighbhorhood which is always open and feels safe. But today after work I needed to pick up some groceries, and in my wanderings I came upon the southern end of what I could only assume to be the blockade. I should say, by the way, that this "street" is not really any such thing; rather, it is a four lane highway, one of the largest in the city, two lanes on each side with a median in between. For perhaps six blocks running north-south in a three-block-wide swath of the city, it is closed off to vehicles by city buses, which are parked at every intersection across each of the two lanes on either side of the median.

Laden with my one overloaded grocery bag and my leather satchel full of teaching materials, I decided today to investigate the mystery further: it was, after all, the easiest route home. Tentatively, I started walking towards it. To my surprise, no one halted me, and I could in fact see one or two normal people walking towards me from the other side of the first line of buses. In fact, there seemed to be no one about at all who looked interested in asking me what on earth I was doing there. I continued, and my heartbeat quickened to the beat of the punk rock music blaring from the CD store open on one side of the street. At least some stores are open, I thought. That's a good sign.

Taking a breath, I crossed the first blockade. And on the other side of the buses, I entered a foreign world. Here, a four-lane highway had been converted into a city park. Women sat picnicking in a thicker section of a median, and genuine, relaxed laughter drifted lazily my way from men sitting across the street from me. Several people riding bikes took advantage of the fact that there were no cars, and as I passed blockade after blockade, I realized that this is the tranquillest part of the city that I have thus far found. I could not hear a single car, even in the distance, just the soft sound of people living, their voices travelling lazily across the warm air. I almost felt cheated for having thought it a dangerous zone for so long.

Walking down the streets, I saw that this area was covered with graffiti, but that it was far more philosophic in nature than the common vandalism I usually see on my way to work: one phrase which particularly struck me read, Mejor morir de pie porque no se puede de rodillos. Esperanza es la ultima morir (Better to die standing, because one cannot die on one's knees. Hope is the last thing to die).

I passed block after block of languid protesters and their families reclining in the streets, finally walking by a baseball game in progress. Relaxed, and totally unafraid, I watched the men play, and realized that in all my wandering I had not been harassed once, nor had I been called güera, the obnoxious word for "pretty white lady" or something of the sort. These people, it seemed, had something more interesting to worry about than me, even if I obviously didn’t belong here. As I walked down the street I even went so far as to wonder whether the people in this neighbourhood didn’t prefer things the way they were for all the tranquillity and calm.

And then, as suddenly as it started, it was over. I walked through the last blockade right onto Highway 190, the six lane divided highway I have to cross one way or another to get to and from work every day (it’s divided in strange ways so there are as many as four and as few as two lanes to cross at a time, with frequent confusing lights that have quashed any potential desire of mine to ever drive in the city). And suddenly, the world was full of noise again. I was confused and disoriented, and my turnoff to go up my street came sooner than I expected. As I continued to walk home, somewhat stunned, the strains of a saxophone reached my ears, accompanied by a slow, mournful drumbeat, a plaintive song like the one in the movie Glory which always used to make me cry. And I wasn’t sure, for a moment, why I wasn’t crying, because I half wanted to, but the tears wouldn’t come.

Teotitlan del Valle

2006-09-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

I went yesterday to Teotitlan del Valle, which I had visited before with Tim, Laura, and Anna Barto to buy rugs and check out the old church. This time, however, I had somewhat more of a mission in mind beyond simply wandering and exploring. One of the three brothers whom I collectively refer to as "my landlord" (Enrique this time), who is also the coordinator of the Spanish school partnered with the English one that I teach at, had invited me and my roommates to participate in a traditional parade. My two English-speaking roommates immediately declined. "We have to teach," they begged off quickly. I had to teach, too, but when you are being invited to not only watch but participate in a traditional parade in a Zapotec community, you simply do not decline. So, rushing my lesson plans for subs, I accepted his invitation at the eleventh hour, as had my Japanese roommate Yoko who, incidentally, is amazing to practice Spanish with because she doesn't speak a word of English nor I a word of Japanese so there is no cheating when we try to communicate.

When we arrived in our collectivo taxis, I could immediately tell that we were in for something special: we veered away from the tourist trap downtown and began climbing the hills to residences higher up from the central marketplace. Teotitlan is in the same valley as the larger (?) Tlacolula, and as with many of the pueblos surrounding Oaxaca, the main marketplace is the only area really accessible to outsiders. Outside of the central shopping area, in the residential zones, there are perhaps a few good places to eat, but no stores, and therefore no real reason or excuse to go exploring. In fact, most artisans from the normal neighborhoods sell their goods to bigger, wealthier families in the more central areas and those families sell to tourists in a perfectly sculpted hierarchy of power and money.

At the home we visited, we were immediately welcomed, shown the family's looms, and invited to sit in a back room facing the family altar, where we crunched on giant rounds of communion wafer, which are, as it turns out, made only from flour, egg, and sugar. My heathen tongue had never actually tasted communion wafer before, my experiences in Church being limited to Easter and perhaps Christmas masses, but I equate the taste to fortune cookies. Simple ingredients but not a simple process unless you have been taught to make them by an expert, was what I could gather from the explanations. This served with agua de jamaica (a brewed mixture made from the leaves of the hibiscus plant, I believe, which I have made myself but never quite tastes the same) made the perfect afternoon snack, as our curiosity and anticipation were allowed to get the better of us while we waited, eager to know what on earth we were actually going to do.

And then the dresses came. Rather, they were red blankets, wool or something else thick and heavy and warm. An old woman, the doña of the house, looked appraisingly at all the girls in the room. I, of course, had been the first to step forward to volunteer to "participate", whatever that meant, and she looked at me with smiling eyes. She was, as it were, over a foot shorter than me, perhaps as tall as my shoulders, her wrinkled skin beautiful and chocolatey brown and creased with wisdom. She spoke to her son, about my age, in Zapotec. I was enchanted. For one, m y American ears were not attuned to words spoken that softly, the practically inaudible lullaby of a Zapotec language I could only even imagine being able to understand. And unlike the city folk I have heard speak Zapotec, she was the real thing, speaking, from what I could gather, only limited Spanish, as simply and sparsely as possible. Her son translated to Spanish, and I, prideful at being the most adept at both Spanish and English, translated to English for the French Canadians (who spoke English moderately well but French amongst themselves) as appropriate. It was a strange, confusing mix of Japanese, Zapotec, English, Spanish, and French; a truly multicultural experience.

Apparently I was wearing the right shirt: by chance, I had worn a puffy white shirt I bought in a market during Guelaguetza with hand embroidered red flowers across the chest. Taking my shoes off, I stepped onto the rug indicated, and stood obediently while the old woman expertly wrapped a red cloth around my waist, folding it like a fan evenly and smoothly at either side of the waist so that it creased just right at the bottom in a sort of pleat. After this came a small white rope, which she securely fastened around my midsection at the top of the red cloth to the fan-folds in place. And then, with superhuman Zapotec strength, she tied the string pretty much as tight as it would go, sucking the red cloth, the bottom of my shirt, and any miscellaneous parts of my torso which might have had the idea of being unruly or moving around all into one tight loop. It felt stiff. Lastly came the pink sash, again tied ritualistically, and which covered the plainness of the rope. When she was finished, she stood back and looked appreciatively at her work. I stood upright, feeling tall mostly because I couldn’t bend over very well but also because of the pride I felt at being the first to be dressed. Then with slow labouring patience she dressed the other two girls, my roommate Yoko and the French Canadian who I had just met and whose name I can’t remember. Her granddaughter, perhaps 15, already dressed and ready to go, looked on from the doorway.

I should interrupt myself here for just a moment to explain the meaning of this whole desfile (parade) thing. In a nutshell, it is a tradition in this village to have the virgin women of the area march around in a large, 2km (about 1.2 mi) with canastas on their heads as penance. Whoa, whoa, whoa, you say… was part of the entrance interview a gynocological exam? And why are the virgins of the village the ones paying penance, while the rest get to sit back and watch? And what on earth is a canasta? Well, in modern times, virginhood is no longer a requirement for participation, though it is generally young women ages 15 to 25 or 30 who participate. They are often but not always unmarried. And in fact, it is a status symbol to have people from outside of town as members of your particular legion because it shows that you have both resources and connections in the outside world. Translation: blond hair and blue eyes are bragging rights. As to the irony of having the purest women in the town paying penance for sins they probably have not committed, I have no explanation. All told I still don’t know what this particular pueblo’s virgin saint is. But seeing your girlfriend or sister march in the parade is, as it has always been, a source of immense pride. As for the canastas, and what they are, and how I chose mine, we will come to that later.

When at last we were ready to go, we marched out of the house and down towards the main church. It had rained for perhaps 20 minutes in the earlier afternoon, and water ran freely over the cobblestones, making the steep descent slippery. And very tenderly, as we walked down the hill, the old woman reached out and held my hand. Maybe it was because she didn’t want me to fall in the mud, but maybe, just maybe, I think it was because she was proud to have me there. All in all it was more like holding the hand of a child than that of a woman, because really she was only holding on to two or three of my fingers, and I her whole hand, and at the same time I had to drop one shoulder awkwardly in order for my arm to reach down to where her hand was. But there we were, marching codo a codo (more or less, “side by side”) to the church, and I the tallest, blondest girl in the parade.

We took a pitstop at another house to sit, drink some more agua (flavoured water, as opposed to agua purificada, or plain water), and wait for further directions. Several women with children came and went, inspecting us, murmuring quiet whispers in Zapotec, and for the most part nodding their approval. And here we were introduced to our first canasta. About five feet high, it was essentially a giant printed picture of Jesus on a crucifix, mounted onto a basket and held erect with bamboo poles. Glitter, many different kinds of paint, and plastic flowers framed the picture beautifully. Not something you would find in a Catholic church at home, but it fit in perfectly with my image of typical Mexican shrines and altarpieces. It was, nonetheless, vaguely frightening, particularly given the idea that we were each going to be wearing one on our head for a two kilometre hike in skirt-blankets. Giggling nervously, we took turns picking it up and precariously balancing it on our heads. This must be a big one, right? Certainly, this awkward, teetering thing cannot be expected to rest on our heads as we march around in circles, right?

We soon found out, of course, that this canasta was standard make and model. Descending even further from the hill to the church, we separated from the men and were shepherded into a back patio behind the church where rows and rows of canastas were lined up royally, waiting for floods and floods of young women to come, who then selected them happily like passive dates being taken to a fiesta. Crucifixes, the standard image on most of the pictures, have always made me feel vaguely uncomfortable and guilty (perhaps that is the point), so I picked instead a softer, less austere picture of Him, clad in blue robes and wearing a smile, rays of light emanating downward from his open palm. “Jesus, confio en ti (Jesus, I trust in thee),” it said at the bottom. “Okay Jesus,” I muttered to myself, feeling rather silly, “I will trust in thee as long as you don’t fall off the top of my head and expose me for the American I am for at least half an hour.”

We then followed our fifteen year old guide, who seemed to be the closest we were going to come to a guide outside, where we were to line up in two tangled rows. She disappeared and reappeared in and out of a sea of red dresses with pink sashes, plaited black hair, and sparkling canastas. I began at this point to feel somewhat like a Girl Scout before a parade, all lined up in legions and utterly anonymous. Then I realized that of course I was the tallest one in the parade by about a foot (these are Zapotec women, you see, not of Spanish descent for the most part, and therefore rather short), blond hair falling in a tangle over my white shoulders, and that there was no way I was ever going to look anonymous in this crowd.

And then, with the loud bangs of fireworks that I could not look up to see because I was too busy balancing a basket with a large picture of Jesus on the top of my head, the parade began. At the front were a band and some other men in costumes, there to entertain and play music for our march around the pueblo, which helped us keep pace. These were the only males in the parade except for one or two fathers walking alongside their very small daughters, whose mini canastas decorated with flowery crowns spent some of their time on the girls´ heads and some in the arms of their fathers. I was continually tripping over the feet of the girl in front of me, stepping in puddles of mud, and trying to crane my head around to see what was going on behind me without disrupting the positioning of my canasta and causing the others in line behind me, including Yoko, to all topple over as well.

The parade march itself was short. We marched more or less in a square, five blocks, left, six blocks, zigzag left right, left, five blocks, left, six blocks, or something of the sort. But at some stretches it felt like an eternity. Little by little the awkward posters became heavier and our arms grew leaden, fixed as they were in an upright position, elbows bent, to keep the baskets from falling off. As we turned the last corner and finally saw the church, I realized how tired I was, and how hungry, in spite of my reassurances to Enrique, who walked alongside snapping pictures, that I was neither. We left girls and came back women, panting and sweaty and massaging our sore arms and heads, trying to realign the tangled mats of hair at the tops of our heads from the baskets sliding and rubbing in all kinds of directions. We laughed breathlessly, setting our canastas down and departing in our troupes without paying further heed to them, our abandoned fiesta dates.

After all was said and done, we women sat down to a grand dinner, tlayudas with chicken and an Amarillo sauce, just right after the long walk. I laughed at the sight of big 2-liter bottles of Sprite, Fanta, and apple and grape soda. Congratulations, corporate America, you have made it quite far. The dueña of the house served us, the guests of honor, for once more important than she as head of household was herself, and at the end pridefully asked me whether I liked the food she had served me. I responded honestly that I did, looking happily across the table to my Mexican, Japanese, and Canadian amigas, who began to wrap up their leftovers in tlayudas to take home, maybe for breakfast tomorrow. As we walked out the door to the house where the men were waiting, I ate the perfect apple, which had been offered me for dessert, for once not worrying about the fact that it wasn’t peeled. It was late, far later than we thought, and the sky was dark. We marched contentedly down the long hill towards the center of the town and the church, having experienced far more than any tourist at first glimpse of Teotitlan. And thus the night ended: slowly, on the steps of the church´s courtyard, where I quietly sat next to a smiling Enrique as we waited for a taxi to take us home. The air was cold and the night was lit by an almost full moon, and someone’s tiny puppy came and curled up on my lap, snuggling its nose under my elbow for warmth.

oh, sweet violence

2006-08-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

I suppose it´s time for an update, particularly that we´ve been splattered all over the news again.

My partner in crime/former roommate/the only other LanguageCorps participant went home today. Apparently she heard gunshots right outside her apartment, her parents got involved, and next thing you know she´s on a plane home. I´m currently trying to stick it out (we´ll see how it goes), though attendance is low in all my classes and the city is on a virtual lockdown at night.

Essentially, things have escalated since I wrote last. The protesters, whose initial demands that Governor Ruiz leave office are looking less and less silly and more and more serious, have control of I think all of the local streams of media (at least radio), and the state government has tried (apparently) with no avail to gain a foothold of what´s going on. The current hope is that when Calderon, the new President, is signed in officially (ie, nationally accepted) on September 10th (7th?), things will calm down. In the meantime, Fox has refused to assist with the situation. Protesters, for their part, have avoided shutting down any major roads or the airport and thereby the commission of a federal crime which would force Fox to act. Agreement to the table to discuss some sort of resolution has recently come about, but a date for the talk hasn´t yet been set.

The normal streets, however, are quite a mess, and have clearly become the battlefield for this particularly sticky political issue. Buses block many of the main arteries to downtown and to neighborhoods where media centers are located, and at night streets have flaming blockades mounted on increasingly permanent piles of rubble and stones. The instance of petty and not so petty crime is also up in the absence of a police force downtown. For a long time it amazed me that downtown remained so safe when we first got here, that so many of the restaurants remained open to tourist traffic, and that so many people were still optimistic that things would just go away. However, quiet nights here are now remarkably uncomfortable in their quietness. You almost wish the crickets and other little critters would be quiet so you could strain your ears over the silence. Even on noisier nights the sound of fireworks is occasionally interrupted by the sound of gunfire. It is almost more of a relief to hear cars and horns blaring because it means that there are normal people on the street.

Pedestrians on the streets at night are far and few between. The one night I did have occasion to walk at night was when Tim left recently, even before things really got bad, and it wasn´t pretty. The teachers for the most part have nothing to do, because actual conflict between the government doesn´t actually come into conflict with protesters except very rarely, and so many of the blockades consist of just one or two armed guards drinking mezcal and brandishing sticks by a fire in the middle of the street. I should say that most people do not seem to be armed with anything more than sticks or pipes, and that the military personnel I have seen (and even these were far from the center or the source of the conflict) are the ones who are armed. Not that this necessarily means anything. The protesters have certainly instigated a lot of conflict and caused a lot of businesses to close.

I should put this in the context that to be honest, no one really knows what´s going on, and that even the NY Times article that came out the other day ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/world/americas/24mexico.html) is missing some information. My program director was indignant that anyone would think of leaving because of the situation, whereas the director of another school I know did advise us to get out of the city for a while. I should say that my immediate safety is not at stake. I live in a nice neighborhood on the periphery of the city, in a compound with a Mexican family and several other teachers. Currently the US embassy has issued a travel notice, but not a travel advisory. Once it gets to that point (if not before, if things continue to deteriorate), I will hop on the first bus to Mexico City and take a plane from there, a trip which will actually be paid for by my (once esoteric and useless-sounding) insurance policy if it really gets out of hand.

In the meantime I have purchased a tacky, plastic soccer ball 5" black and white-screen TV and am attempting to keep abreast of the news and the goings on in the city. The liberal rag is currently being published from outside the city, but news still gets in. I actually don´t believe any of it whatsoever, so it´s been hard to evaluate whether I should actually go home.

In other, lighter news, chapulines, Oaxaca´s "special" Oaxacan dish of fried grasshoppers, taste like crap: I´d say rotten fish doused with lemon juice about sums it up, but we did buy them from some random lady at a market. I would be willing to try them again at a restaurant if I get a chance. Oh, and on a totally irrelevant topic, I was on TV on Tuesday about the bus system when Tim´s first class bus to Mexico was canceled because of "los problemas" here and we had to find another one at the eleventh hour across the city. Silly me, I thought reporters were just good for asking for information, but apparently they´re also johnny on the spot for when you want a camera stuck in your face with bright lights and you´re in your pyjama pants and have got a lot of other things to think about. Anyways, everyone I know saw me on TV (I, of course, missed the spectacle because I was teaching), so that was kind of exciting, except I´m pretty sure I said something boring and apolitical.

Anyways, best to everyone. Again, I´m okay and not going out at night, and when I do go out even in day I do my best to go with someone else. I´m currently waiting to hear word from the embassy about what I should do from here and how to deal with the situation if things get worse. In the meantime, have a nice batch of pasta with homemade sauce and some sour jelly-bellies for me- those seem to be things I miss most.

and finally training is over...

2006-08-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

An update on the goings-on in Oaxaca:

Finished my training/certification program (finally) yesterday. It was actually quite sad to have to say goodbye to everyone. After having spent a full month of 12-hour days filled with crazed last-minute lesson planning and nerve-wracking hours of being observed teaching, it feels strange to not have them to go back to on Monday for more classes and commiseration. One of my better friends, however, originally a pastry chef from New York City, made the (brave) decision to stay here for a year at the end of the course, too, so I will have some American company if I want it. I am also eager to stay in touch with my teacher-trainers, who were incredible. Todd, tattooed and pierced and full of hidden spiritual experiences that I didn´t get to hear near enough about in our formal classroom setting, seems to have traveled to every country in the world that I want to go to, quite the intrepid traveler. Gina is herself a graduate of the School for International Training in Vermont, where I wouldn´t mind getting my Master´s degree if I ever end up going that route, and spent a number of years teaching in Japan. Her sample Japanese language lessons definitely made me want to learn to speak Japanese. Between the two of them I can´t actually name a country they haven´t been to.

Anyways, back to Oaxaca. I have found permanent work at a private language school called Cambridge Academy, complete with contract and vacation days and opportunities for professional development (rare here for the most part). I will be beginning two of my classes on the 14th, and will be teaching a normal, full schedule starting at the beginning of September. I will be living in an apartment in Colonia Reforma, the wealthier part of town to the north, which includes a big bedroom with a small terrace with a hammock, a private bathroom, a beautiful shared kitchen with two walls open to the garden (right up my alley) and a fair amount of independence. The only downside is that it is a half-hour walk to work at the main building, but I am arranging taking half of my hours at the new building which is significantly nearer to where I will live. I am also fairly nearby one of the only pools in the city (weee!).

I am starting to feel like I belong here, or at least enough to give smart-ass retorts to taxi drivers and construction workers who try catcalling in English. One man was quite taken aback the other day in particular when I told him I was German and that I didn´t speak any English, so I couldn´t understand what he was saying. Nevermind that I immediately afterwards walked into the doorway of the English language school I am teaching at. Just being able to parry the comments of the doubters feels gratifying. My Spanish, especially my comprehension, has become quite good, and I have begun to wrap my head around what kind of humor translates and what just renders faces blank. Mostly I experiment with my host dad, who is quite the jokester himself.

The city, as always, is full of a wide variety of people, both tourists and locals. Guelaguetza, the two-week July cultural festival and tourist trap, was canceled for the first time in history because of political tension: the festival is mostly put on by locals from nearby pueblos but the government gets all the ticket money at a price too expensive for locals to afford. The protesting maestros went to all of the sites that the Guelaguetza was supposed to take place and camped out so that government work crews couldn´t set up or refurbish the main stadium. The maestros are still downtown in the zocalo, too, although I´m not really sure why, because the elections are over and international attention has for the most part shifted to Lebanon and the middle east, and it has become quite apparent that Ulyses will not leave governorship until his term has officially expired.

While I actually enjoy seeing the turmoil for historical purposes, it is indeed quite annoying to have to step over rocks and walk around road barricades to get downtown to a pub or cafe (note, however, that with the exceptions of the very very ritzy locations, businesses are still open). Needless to say, buses to Puerto Escondido and other beach locations were packed during Guelaguetza with tourists who had made their reservations months in advance but were put off by the confusion between the protesters and the government.

In the meantime, the government is a virtual nonpresence downtown. Oddly enough, however, it remains one of the safest places to walk to and grab a beer at night: it is always populated with families, teenagers, and tourists until at least 2 or 3 in the morning... they stay up late here, especially on the weekends, and the city is full of incredible hole-in-the wall cafes and courtyards with amazing food and music... my favorite place so far in terms of bars and cafes is one called La Cucaracha (yes, `the cockroach´) which my tourist friends actually didn´t want to go into because of the name but turned out to be a welcoming, slightly-more-upscale-than-the-Blarney-Stone-at-Clark kind of place. It also boasts a mean tostada for just a buck fifty, and free snacks when you order a beer. I will definitely be a regular customer. The spicy peanuts and fried, pretzel-shaped cheeto-looking things with hotsauce are delicious.

I have over 320 pictures on my camera, but the internet is so slow at these internet cafes that it takes forever to upload them to the web. I am still working on it, but I may just wait until Tim gets here on the 17th and have him help me with it. Your imaginations and this blog will simply have to serve in the interim.

Namaste,

Anna

Oaxaca, en un internet cafe... evening, warm

2006-07-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

I am currently living with my host family, and I could not have asked for anything more from them. They host many American students, and our Señora Ceci who is perhaps sixty, spent practically her entire life up to this point working for the tourism board and the government, and so she knows EVERYTHING there is to know about the city- every day she gives us something new to check out on our daily walks, which I try to take every morning to get both a better sense of direction and also a feel for the city. Señor Adolfo is also very kind- what they call in Spanish a bromista, or joker, and he always has me smiling, explaining patiently to me the meaning of different expressions and sayings and definitely keeping me on my toes. Both also periodically correct my grammar and offer answers to my myriad of questions about both language and culture. Also it is interesting to note that in the current elections (which are very exciting) they voted different ways, and their three children (all in their late 20s early 30s) also each have different party affiliations.

The teacher protests are actually very interesting, and when I get a chance I will send some pictures of what is going on. Currently their encampment is almost empty because they all went to their pueblos to vote on Sunday. The city downtown is mostly affected in the wealthiest parts where tourists have canceled their reservations, but you can walk wherever you want pretty much and not be harassed, although many streets are currently closed to car traffic because they have closed off the street. There is a lot of graffiti and trash left over, but people are already trying to clean things up. The grossest thing is perhaps that one or two street corners smell like urine because the toilets were taken away.Many citizens in the city (including my host family) are not in support of what the teachers have done because they have made somewhat of a mess of the downtown area, what with the graffiti and papier mache figurines of Ulyses (the current governor, who they want usurped) labeled "asesino" (assassin, as you might guess). Last night there were actually tons of parades around the city with members of the PRD, who claimed to have won the presidential election, but as it is the margin of error is greater than the margin of difference so no one will actually know who won until at least Wednesday.

My Spanish is already improving immensely. Some of my favorite new words have been tufa, the aftertaste associated with good mescal (which is delicious and smoky the way you would taste the smoky aftertaste of a good cheese), guera (not actually a favorite, though very important to know because it describes all fair-haired and fair-skinned people and is not actually negative, though it is somewhat annoying to be called one, because you just sit there and think, duh, I´m a guera, what do you want me to do about it?), tlayuda the name for their huge tortillas, which are delicious. I have also learned from my coordinator as well as some other kind souls that familiar words like chorizo, torta, and juevos as well as the word gustar (which normally simply means to like something) can actually mean inappropriate things when said in the wrong context.

My Spanish classes are interesting, particularly the one teacher who speaks quickly and with somewhat of an accent so it is good practice to try to understand her. The other teacher, whose language is a bit easier to understand, is kind of boring, and we went over some grammar today that was rather basic and boring, but I put in a request to learn more colloquialisms and slang so we don´t sound quite as goofy when we talk to people in stores and such, so that will be more interesting.

The city is fabulous. I can´t even begin to describe how amazing it is. The mornings are mild, easily my favorite part of the day, and with light clothing, the heat in the afternoon is quite pleasant too. It is also definitely a walking city, with blocks and blocks of small shops selling mangos (two for just 46 cents here!), limes (three for 10 cents), and other delicious goodies. The architecture is likewise amazing: most of the buildings have very flat fronts (no facades like in the US) and are painted in all kinds of bright and beautiful colors, which don´t look at all out of place when you put them all together. When you look inside the doorways of each building, however, inside are courtyards with beautiful flowers and plants, bicycle shops, cafes, and clothing stores. Also there are tens of cathedrals, old convents, and churches, which are just a mindblow. Everything has cuppolas (sp?) on top, in the Spanish and Italian style of Filippo Brunelleschi, and look to be a million years old. The parks are likewise interesting and beautiful, and in many places they are remodeling despite people´s grumbling that the governor spends too much money on such projects.

It´s easy to get tired because of the elevation, though, as we are relatively high up in the mountains, and I have not quite adjusted to it yet: the main meal of the day, comida, is served quite late and I am almost always ready for a nap afterwards, particularly after having walked all morning. I have been lucky enough, too, to taste some different kinds of food, and am already further intrigued by Mexico´s mole sauces, which I want to learn how to make. Señora Ceci is quite kind, and seems to have a personal goal of fattening me up because I seem to eat everything she puts in front of me, for curiosity if not for hunger, while some of the other girls in the house do not. I have enjoyed several cheeses from both Chiapas and Oaxaca, as well as meatballs, tamales, a chocolate drink with a maseca (corn-water) base, frijoles and tortillas (of course), delicous soups, and gelatin or jello, which they apparently serve all the time here. Thus far I have avoided street food, not because it looks unappetizing (the aromas are incredible) but because I want to be sure my stomach has built up a tolerance to bacteria from the water (which is brown- everyone buys it in bottles) in small doses before I get too adventurous. I am also excited to try chapulines, or fried grasshoppers, which look strange but if you eat them, apparently you will return to Oaxaca some day after you leave.

Anyways, I am definitely having fun and learning a lot- my adrenaline is constantly going from the thrill of just being here and being able to talk to people and ask questions of whomever I want, and I almost feel as though I should be taking notes when I talk to people- everyone is so friendly and knowledgeable and I feel totally safe, even with the protests. My house is also central to pretty much everything, or at least with a little walking, which I do not mind. I am anxious to begin working, but of course training (which will be totally boring, I already know) has to come first. Soon, too, I will be able to show Tim all of this- I am so excited to be able to show him around, and I know he is already excited.

Inverness Park, CA. Night time, clear and mild.

2006-06-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

The windows of the living room are finally dark, after having for so long today framed the trees across the ravine so perfectly; the plaintive sound of the radio has replaced that of the ospreys teaching their babies to fly; the wilting flowers in the vase on the kitchen table are all that remain of the vibrance of the blossoming garden which I so painstakingly watered for the best part of this morning. And finally, the mess strewn across the living room floor has found itself into my backpacking backpack, a rolling duffel bag, a carry-on, and one "small personal item such as a purse or small backpack" (in this case my backpack), ready for the trip to the airport tomorrow.

The only reason that I can't sleep is because I feel that one should not be able to sleep under these circumstances. Already I have said my goodbyes to most of my family and friends, and I now sit alone with my passport and ticket, waiting for the time to expire until I am on United flight 977 tomorrow morning to Mexico City where I can wait another four hours for AVIACSA flight 241 into Oaxaca to meet Anna Barto and Sra. Ceci, whom I have never met but who will be my only friends in the new city for the time being, at least until Laura Gillman joins me on Saturday as another newcomer.

I have been running miscellaneous Spanish phrases over and over in my head for months now, wondering how I will deal with specific situations and questions that might arise that I wouldn't know the words to deal with. Oddly enough, the last thing on my mind-- which coincidentally seems to be the first question on everyone else's lips-- is where I will work, where I will live, and how I will get by. These things, like so much else, I simply assume I will figure out. Instead, I have gone over the inane and practical details which will actually govern my experience getting to and subsequently living in the city: going through customs with a one-way ticket, getting my visa, unpacking my things, buying food and negotiating meals. And yet I have no image whatsoever of what this whole adventure will be like. Most people don't realize that I have never, in fact, actually been to Mexico before, and yet here I sit on the eve of my departure, committed to a year of living in a city I hadn't even heard of until about six months ago.

And yet the one thing that I am certain about is that this is the eve of a great adventure and a new kind of learning. I am enormously intrigued by the idea of the zócalo and yet I am sure that my favorite places will be the hole-in-the wall cafés and restaurants with local flavor and personality. I wonder about the people I will meet and the things they will have to say, what will make them laugh, and just precisely what they do for a good time in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico.

But I guess those are questions for tomorrow.